Many have long argued that the “price” women must pay for a strong social safety net is a government that interferes with your reproductive choices. France is proving them wrong, dropping part of its paternalistic abortion laws.

Last month, France became the first country in the world to remove transsexualism from its official list of mental disorders, reports Time magazine, in what is being considered a major, though some say largely symbolic, victory.

How can so many American feminists have come out against a burqa ban in France? The answer is that singling out the burqa as the only article of clothing patriarchal enough to merit legal regulation is racist.